


Stubborn Wounds

by ConstantWriter85



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Genre: Blood and Injury, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America Sam Wilson, Enemies to Friends, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Other, POV Sam Wilson, Platonic Relationships, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is So Done, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, wound reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26816971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstantWriter85/pseuds/ConstantWriter85
Summary: When Bucky’s badly injured after trying to protect his partner, Sam realizes that he needs Bucky more than he’d care to admit.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 170





	Stubborn Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Blood and Graphic Injury, Whump, Field Medicine, Angst, and Fluff

The last thing Sam remembered before the warehouse exploded and the world fell out from under him was Barnes shoving him forward under the overhang and falling on top of him, covering him with his body.

***

Sam gasped awake. At first, he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed, and then he realized he was staring into pitch black darkness. He was lying on his stomach, a warm, heavy weight on his back and legs. As his brain struggled to come fully online, the medic in him started to take inventory of his injuries.

He coughed, bringing up a grimy wad of phlegm which he spat disgustedly to the side. It was hard to breathe, but not because it actually hurt. The air was thick with concrete dust, and the weight on his back pressed relentlessly down, making him squirm. Pain flared along his ribcage, not bad enough to be broken, but enough to be a nuisance. His head throbbed and he felt the sticky warmth of blood running down his face, the creeping dizziness and nausea telling him he probably had a concussion.

Sam felt his face and realized why he couldn’t see—his goggles were gone. Frantically, he felt around on the ground around him, but they were nowhere to be found. Without them, he was as good as blind. Sam lay still for a moment, trying to get his bearings as it all came rushing back to him. The detonator, the trap, the building starting to crumble around him and Barnes—wait. Where was Barnes?

It was then that he realized the weight above him was breathing. Barnes was lying on top of him, his vibranium arm curled around Sam’s head protectively. Quickly, Sam scrambled out from under him as fast as his ribs would allow.

“Barnes!”

The rubble shifted as he moved, and Barnes cried out, instantly coming awake. Sam rolled free and he lay panting for a moment, feeling Barnes’ vibranium hand grasp at him.

“S-Sam?” Barnes’ voice was choked, his teeth clenched.

“I’m right here, man.”

Sam rolled over, following the man’s hand up to his face. There was a little blood on the back of his head, but the wound wasn’t too deep. Sam moved his hands down to Barnes’ shoulders, and he stopped suddenly when he felt a large slab of concrete pressing down on the soldier’s back. Large chunks of rubble had fallen on top of him, pinning him down.

Barnes tried to pull himself free, and cursed. “Help me get this slab off me, I can’t get the leverage,” he wheezed. “It’s crushing my back.”

Sam crouched next to Barnes, braced himself against the slab, and lifted. He heard the whir of the plates on Barnes’ metal arm as they shifted the load together. The slab lifted slightly, and then Barnes cried out again, gasping.

“W-Wait…hold on a second.”

“What do you mean, _hold on_?” Sam grunted, legs starting to shake under the weight.

There was a loud snapping sound, and he felt Barnes push up again. Sam heaved, and the slab tumbled to the side as Barnes slid out.

Both men fell to the floor, gasping. Sam could hear Barnes shifting around, his breathing strained.

“Barnes…You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he grunted. “And I told you, call me Bucky.”

Sam nodded. He was sure Barnes… _Bucky_ was probably hurting a bit, but the man was too stoic to say anything.

“What about you?” Bucky asked. He was still breathing heavily. “You good?”

“Bruised ribs and one helluva headache, but I’m all right.”

Bucky grunted, and Sam heard him shift again. “Call Sharon. My comm’s gone.”

Sam nodded. Made sense, he couldn’t see shit, so what the hell else was he supposed to do? He wondered if Bucky could see any better with his enhanced eyesight. Sam placed the call, but got nothing but static.

“I’ve got nothing, man, looks like we’re on our own.” He sat heavily in the rubble, and shook his head.

“Whole fucking place came down on us…I can’t believe we weren’t crushed.”

“Just good luck, I guess.”

“Well, we’re trapped down here now.” Sam sat up, looking blindly through the darkness. “Can you see anything? I lost my goggles, and I can’t see shit.”

Long wheezing breaths. He wondered if there was something Bucky wasn’t telling him. He was about to ask, when Bucky spoke.

“There’s a…light over on the left. Faint, but it’s there. Turn your back to me and reach up.”

Sam felt around, and started to pry some rubble loose. “Here?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll be lucky if this whole thing doesn’t come down on our heads.”

Bucky chuckled, and dissolved into a coughing fit. Sam could hear him scooting around on the floor, but he had yet to hear him stand.

“Further to the left,” Bucky said quietly.

Sam nodded, shifting his position. He’d started to dig a small tunnel through the debris, and he felt hope start to bloom. Nothing earth-shattering had shifted overhead…yet.

He continued to work in silence for several long minutes. Sweat was pouring down his forehead, and the air was close. Bucky still hadn’t gotten up or even offer to help. The man was an insufferable asshole, but this was a new low. Sam grit his teeth.

“Are you gonna help at some point?”

“I’m supervising.”

“ _Supervising_ …are you shitting me?”

“Just shut your mouth and dig. This place could cave at any minute, and you’ve got to get out. Call Sharon.”

Bucky’s voice was still strained, and Sam felt his stomach sink. Something was wrong.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I told you…I’m fine…Call her again.”

Bucky was adamant. Sam shrugged and continued to dig, calling to Sharon on his earpiece. Another piece of rubble fell down, and there they were—his goggles.

“Thank the lord!” Sam hooted as he put them on.

For a minute he was overwhelmed with sensation and the goggles came online, mapping the terrain and adjusting to the darkness. The night-vision flared, iridescent shades of green and grey. He turned towards where he knew Bucky was sitting, and the smile fell from his face.

Bucky was leaned back against the slab of concrete, his face white as a sheet. He looked virtually unharmed, if it wasn’t for the piece of rebar sticking out of his chest. A large pool of blood was soaking into the dirt around him.

“Fuck!”

Sam fell to his knees next to the super soldier, his pararescue training kicking in. He could see that the rebar had been snapped off flush against his back, and he vaguely remembered a snapping sound as he’d helped Bucky shift the slab off him.

Bucky had snapped the rebar with his metal hand, and he hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t even cried out.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” Sam was pissed, worried…and he felt uncharacteristically frantic.

“N-Nothing…you could do…anyway.”

“You know I was a pararescue, right?”

Bucky was fading. “…know a fatal wound…when I see one,” he murmured.

“Don’t be dramatic. You’re not dying.”

_You sure about that?_

Sam pulled the field triage kit from his pocket. If felt laughingly lightweight.

He knew better than to pull the rebar out, so he packed the wound with gauze as best he could. The kit was bare minimum—no IV or fluids, only a single pressure bandage and some morphine. He doubted it would have any effect on Bucky’s enhanced metabolism, but he gave it to him anyway.

Bucky groaned.

“Leave…me alone—”

He sucked in a breath and tensed as a wave of pain washed over him. His feet scrabbled in the dirt, and a small whimper escaped his clenched teeth.

“Buck…”

Bucky’s metal hand fisted the front of Sam’s uniform, pulling him closer.

“Go,” he gasped. “I can hear it shifting…this pocket’s not gonna hold. You need…to get out.”

Bucky’s voice was a little stronger now, but Sam knew he was just using every last ounce of strength he had to get his point across. Bucky coughed again, and his hand came away wet with blood. The inner-medic in Sam calculated that Bucky’s chance of survival had just decreased by a sizable margin.

 _No_.

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Th-The world needs Captain America…it d-doesn’t need me.”

Sam suddenly realized what had happened. He’d woken up with Bucky on top of him, Bucky’s metal arm coiled around his head. Bucky had knocked him down, protecting him with his own body—if he hadn’t, the rebar would have gone through Sam, instead.

Bucky had saved him.

_You fucking asshole! You goddamn, selfless bastard! You just sat there, bleeding out while I--_

“Dig…Call…Call Sharon…get th’fuck outta here…while you can.” Bucky’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“I don’t leave men behind.”

A wheezing cough that might have been a laugh. “S-s-sound…like S-Steve.”

Sam felt for a pulse at Bucky’s throat. It was thready and weak.

“Hey asshole, you stay with me, you hear?”

Bucky didn’t say anything. His eyes were closed, and Sam couldn’t tell if he was breathing anymore.

_“Sam! Sam, do you copy? We’re at the site!”_

Sharon.

“Sharon, we’re here! Bucky’s hurt—bad. Home in on our signal, we need an extraction asap!”

Distantly, he heard the whine of the Quinjet’s engines as it touched down somewhere above them. Rubble and debris began to fall as the rest of the team dug down to where they were trapped. Sam’s eyes closed in relief as he heard Banner’s grunts added to the mix—the Hulk would make short work of the excavation.

Sam pulled Bucky closer and tried to shield the soldier from the raining debris. It seemed like his wound had finally stopped bleeding, his enhanced healing from the serum causing the edges of the wound to seal against the rebar. Sam kept his fingers pressed against the pulse at Bucky’s throat, feeling it steadily weaken and slow.

He felt something warm running down his cheeks, and he knew it wasn’t sweat. Sam never would’ve admitted it, not in a million years, but he actually liked Bucky. The man was an intolerable asshole at times, but he was loyal as a dog and a solid friend.

He was dying in Sam’s arms, and there was nothing he could do about it. All his training, all his skill, it wasn’t enough to save his friend.

Sam suddenly felt very small and afraid.

“Goddamnit! You do _not_ get to check out on me, Barnes—not on my watch! Just hang in there a little bit longer, the team is right there—they’re right there!”

The groan of tortured metal overhead, and the whole world went dark.

***

Sam scrubbed his face and took a swig of the shitty med center coffee.

Ugh.

He felt like he’d been wrung dry. The past twenty-four hours were a blur, from the moment they set foot in that warehouse until now.

All in all, he had escaped pretty much unscathed. A concussion and some broken ribs—a small price to pay for surviving a building collapse…twice.

Sam had thought it was all over when the rest of the building came down. The last thing he remembered before the world went dark a second time was huge green hands reaching for him. Hulk had pulled them both out, seconds before they would have been crushed.

He’d come to in the Compound med center with a splitting headache and the worst case of dry mouth he’d ever had. Instantly awake, he shoved off the hands trying to keep him in bed, ignoring Sharon’s beratements.

“Where is he? Where’s—”

He saw the look on her face, and the words died in his throat.

“Is…is he…”

“I don’t know. He’s still in surgery. They—it doesn’t look good, Sam.”

Seven hours.

Sam sat in the waiting room chair for seven hours while the doctors worked to save Bucky, getting up only to pace the room and drink more shitty coffee. While he paced, he stewed. Here he was, a seasoned medic. He knew the score, he knew the outcome with injuries like this, and he was acting like a goddamn civilian.

He was terrified of losing Bucky.

He had already lost so much. Steve had been his friend too. And Nat. And even Tony. Now they were all gone, and Sam couldn’t bear the thought of losing anyone else. Bucky and Sam were constantly butting heads, bickering and teasing each other, but they were a team. The Winter Soldier was the other half of Captain America, and Sam _needed_ him.

He needed Bucky to be okay.

Finally, the OR door opened and Dr. Cho came out.

Bucky was going to live.

In the bed next to his chair, Bucky stirred. Blue eyes blinked open lazily, scanning the room in confusion before lighting on Sam. Bucky tried to say something, but nothing came out except a choked wheeze. He coughed, and his eyes squeezed shut as he clutched his chest in pain.

“Yeah, talking isn’t really a good idea right now. You want me to get a nurse?”

Bucky shook his head. “W-Water,” he croaked.

_Stubborn asshole._

Sam got the cup from the bedside table and helped him drink. Bucky’s eyes scanned him from head to toe, pausing on the bandage on the side of Sam’s head.

“Yeah, I got off pretty light, compared to you. Punctured lung, broken ribs, three fractured discs in your spine, near-critical blood loss, respiratory arrest—you’re lucky to be alive.”

Bucky shrugged. “I’ll be fine…been through worse.”

Sam considered that. Bucky had a point. He supposed any day he wasn’t waking up half-frozen and strapped to a mind-wipe chair was a good day in Bucky’s book.

Still, that was then, and this is now. It didn’t have to be like that anymore, and the thought that Bucky would just callously shrug off yet another near-death experience terrified him.

It angered him.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Shield me with your body. Lie to me. Hide how badly you were hurt. _Pick one_.” His tone was clipped and stern.

Bucky closed his eyes wearily. “I told you…the world needs you a lot more than it needs me.”

“Well maybe I need you.”

Bucky laughed softly, and dissolved into another coughing fit. “You don’t. Trust me.”

Sam frowned and crossed his arms. “You don’t get to choose what I do and don’t need.”

“Stop being dramatic. I’m fine, you’re fine. It’s over. Done. Leave it alone.”

Bucky closed his eyes, brushing off Sam’s feelings yet again. Sam felt the fear and anger boil over.

“You self-sacrificing idiot! You could’ve died—you almost did! Maybe you don’t care about that, but I do. I care, Bucky. You’re my friend, and I need you.”

Blue eyes blinked open again, and Sam hated the pain and self-loathing he saw there.

“You scared the shit out of me, Buck. I…I thought I lost you, and I—”

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s lips twitched. He looked so sincerely apologetic, that all the anger deserted Sam.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he said again. “I just…I really didn’t think…and you…”

Bucky closed his eyes and gathered his strength. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I didn’t think I was gonna make it, and I didn’t want you to waste your time on a lost cause when you could still make it out.”

Sam could feel his eyes start to burn, and he bit the inside of his cheek.

“I know, Buck. It’s okay. Just…you have to care too. I really do need you. We’re a team, and I need my other half…even if that other half is a hundred-year-old, semi-stable asshole.”

Bucky chuckled dryly. “Yeah…that sucks for you.”

Sam laughed. “We good then? You stickin’ around with me?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky smiled faintly. It was genuine and heartfelt, and Sam relaxed for the first time since they’d entered the med center. Bucky’s eyes started to drift shut, and Sam squeezed his shoulder affectionately.

“Get some sleep, old man, you look like shit.”

Sam settled back in the chair, a crooked smile on his face as he watched sleep claim his friend.

“I'm still the better looking one…” Bucky murmured.

“Asshole.”


End file.
